One of the most familiar names and faces in the Formula E paddock, James Barclay, will leave the Jaguar team at the end of the present season.
The Race can reveal that Barclay has decided to call time on his 12-year stint at Jaguar Land Rover after the final round in London in late July and take up another position within motorsport. This is believed, although not yet confirmed, to not be within the Formula E paddock.
Barclay was instrumental in the setting up of the Jaguar Formula E programme in 2016 and guided it through a challenging first season before it began to emerge as a winning unit - Mitch Evans taking its first win in its third season at the 2019 Rome E-Prix.
Fourteen further wins have come since then via Evans, Sam Bird and Nick Cassidy. Jaguar took last season's teams' title and the inaugural manufacturers' crown in the all-electric world championship.
Barclay is understood to have given notice of his intention to pursue a new career opportunity in motorsport earlier this month, with the team and drivers being notified just ahead of the Miami E-Prix.
A team statement confirmed that Barclay "has decided to leave his role as managing director JLR Motorsport and team principal of Jaguar TCS Racing, effective from 1 August 2025, to pursue an exciting role outside our business".
"James has been an integral member of the JLR leadership team since he joined the company in 2013. Among many significant accomplishments during his time at JLR, last year, James sensationally led Jaguar TCS Racing to Jaguar's first world championship win since 1991."
Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds said: "‘He's a racer himself and very passionate about racing. James is a really good collaborator for us, very collegiate and very supportive of the championship ambition to grow. And he's been part of the growth. He's put a shift in he's earned the right to go on and do something else."
Along with the Formula E programme, Barclay was also key in establishing a Dakar Rally programme for the Defender brand which will compete in the FIA World Rally Raid Championship from 2026.
A replacement for Barclay is not expected to be formalised for some months.
Jaguar has had two other key members of its team move on in recent times with both Craig Wilson, CEO of Jaguar partner Fortescue Zero (formerly Williams Advanced Engineering), and technical director Phil Charles leaving the team in the last 18 months.
The most experienced member of the Jaguar senior team still present now is Gary Ekerold, who holds the title of race director at the team, although he is directly employed by Fortescue Zero.
Barclay's legacy at Jaguar
Barclay will leave Jaguar this summer as a manufacturer that has tasted a great deal of success over the last eight and a half years.
From a cold standing start, Barclay and other key figures such as Wilson, Ekerold and Charles formed a strong unit that went from starry upstarts to one of Formula E's best overall operators.
Raised in South Africa, Barclay competed in UK Vauxhall and Lotus national series in the early 2000s but began his professional career by being part of the team that relaunched Lotus Motorsport in 2006.
With a marketing and PR background he also had a stint at Bentley from 2002 to 2013 and was part of the team that won the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2003. Barclay is known to have a deep love of endurance sportscar racing.
At the initial Jaguar Formula E team launch, held high above the London skyline at the Shard building in November 2015, Barclay spoke eloquently about Jaguar's return to international racing, saying the company had made an "important decision for Jaguar" and that it "wanted to get it right".
Formula E was an obvious choice for JLR as it had already laid foundations to electrify its range of products over the next decade and beyond. That became more crystallised with bold and provocative marketing campaigns including last year's 'copy nothing'-inspired push that gained remarkable global coverage.
Barclay presided over Jaguar during three Formula E rulesets and had to make some tough decisions, including a large recruitment drive after a difficult first season in 2016-17, firing Nelson Piquet Jr in 2019, the surprise choice to replace Alex Lynn with James Calado in the same year, ceasing the Jaguar I-PACE eTROPHY race programme in 2020, and dealing with the aftermath of technical director Charles making a surprise move to DS Penske in 2024.
Then there was the ultimate bittersweet moment in London last July when Jaguar took the teams' and manufacturers' crowns but had both Evans and Cassidy lose drivers' title chances after the team got tangled up in a decision-making bind and allowed Porsche's Pascal Wehrlein to crown himself as champion.
At heart, Barclay is a racer which, through an often polished corporate veneer, can at first sometimes be lost to those who are not familiar with his overall passion for motorsport. But a committed racing sensibility overall has been a major asset because, along with his senior team and what they've created, Jaguar has had a mostly successful return to the global racing stage.
The wider question now is if Barclay can help Jaguar get out of a rare rut in recent years and into a position of being able to defend its two crowns this season.
At present that seems a stretch, so a seamless handover this summer and a focus on the start of the Gen4 period for the 2026-27 season appears to be the natural aim for whoever Barclay's successor will be.
